Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/08/21/saving-throw-2.html
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I checked this out recently, though i haven’t had a chance to use it. I’ve been using Roll20 for the most part and my DM is doing a custom campaign so we haven’t had a need for using another site. However one of the things that intrigues me about it is that it tries to make creating characters an easier endeavor.
Also it will require a Twitch account but as far as i can tell it’s a free service.
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It’s free for all SRD materials (anything in the basic starter set) but anything beyond that you have to buy the digital book through D&D Beyond (not from anywhere else). You can do it piecemeal so it’s not too bad but as someone who owns some of the books it’s a little irksome.
Well more options to play D&D is always a good thing and the site seems to be well thought out. Don’t see myself using it but i do hope it finds some success
The biggest problem is that they needed to have done this like five years ago, not now. Roll20 and others filled a gap that was easy to implement on WotC’s behalf, but they’ve been historically awful at digital stuff (see: MTGO).
It looks like the rulebooks are even 33% off right now, so $20 each instead of $30. I haven’t checked out any official digital tools for 5th d yet, since the 4th ed stuff was a disaster after they discontinued the offline character builder, but this actually looks ok since it’s not done by Wazards in-house.
WotC canceled their 4e digital tools when the lead sort of… well murder-suicided his estranged wife… pretty much exactly nine years ago.
Also, roll20 proably shoudl improve their UI if they want to compete with digital tools more directly. roll20’s html functionality is superb, but literally everything else about it is terrible and has never been improved much. I can’t stand trying to use their sheets, though some of the user made ones are good - except for when updates delete PC information which is a common problem.
Officialdom was always the worst part of this game. Didn’t we all know that one guy, the future CPA who came to play armed with spreadsheets and a calculator?
In the Roll20 campaign that i’m in some rolls that use stat modifiers are totally and completely broken. It calculates things strangely as well when using stat modifiers so it’s hard to tell what’s causing the bad rolls. As a work around we’ve had to do base rolls of d20 and then add whatever on top of it.
The only sheet I have liked on roll20 has been for RuneQuest, and that’s because it’s a straight 1d100 roll compared to a value and the target value is modified on a non-linear scale. So the sheet just put it all front and center.
For most things - like D&D 5e - I use a google sheet and input the rolls manually. It makes more sense when I can just type /r 2d20kh1+N for something versue clicking a few buttons. I don’t even use macros anymore.
Rolls work 90% of the time in Roll20, even things that use some bonuses that come from different things (+2 arrows, +3 bow, etc). But there’s some specific instances that it does this really confusing math involving the floor or ceiling that i don’t understand.
The only thing I know about dice and floors is that if it lands on the floor you re-roll it. Unless it’s a 20 then you argue that it counts.
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